Monday, January 16, 2012

While bodies pile up at Cook County morgue, Preckwinkle praises Occupy crowd (VIDEO)

To the disgust of some staff, bodies are piling up at the office of the Cook County Medical Examiner, stacked atop each other in blue plastic tarps against a wall of the storage cooler because of ongoing financial woes, the Sun-Times has learned.

The medical examiner is under the authority of the president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, Toni Preckwinkle. What was she doing yesterday afternoon? Lauding the efforts of the far-left groups at Occupy the Dream at Peoples Church on Chicago's North Side. The Rev. Yehiel Curry, the clergy chair for Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, asked Preckwinkle, "Will you work with IIRON [another leftist group] to develop criteria and standards for county banking considering mortgages, foreclosures, business lending, and vacant properties." Preckwinkle's firm reply was "Yes."

After explaining that she is a former history teacher, Preckwinkle praised democracy, which she said "is at the same time the best and most fragile form of government on earth--for the same reason, it depends on an active and engaged citizenry. So I want to thank all of you here today for the good work you do in making our democracy strong."

Several minutes later, as I wrote last night, a Lutheran pastor told the same crowd that he will bust into a vacant house on behalf of a homeless family on Thursday. While I have tremendous sympathy for anyone who is homeless, this minister is planning to the break the law. We are, at least for now, a nation of laws.

Since last fall the medical examiner's office has been donating bodies to science if they are unclaimed after just two weeks, although the county modified the policy if family members objected.

All the while Preckwinkle has been polishing her liberal credentials by refusing to cooperate with federal authorities who are asking Cook County to jail suspected illegal immigrants who are arrested for 48 hours until ICE figures out what to do with them. Deportation of course being an option for the feds. An illegal who was accused in a recent fatal drunk driving accident has left the country after posting bond. Preckwinkle is blaming a county ordinance, but this non-lawyer is under the opinion that federal law trumps local law.

I do, on the other hand, support Preckwinkle's rollback of her predecessor's one percent county sales tax hike.

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